Russian opposition leader, journalist and historian Vladimir Kara-Murza received the 2025 Wallenberg Medal on Nov. 4 at the University of Michigan, delivering a stirring lecture on the power of choosing not to be afraid, even in the face of tyranny.
The event marked the 30th Wallenberg Lecture, held before a packed audience at Rackham Auditorium. Kara-Murza, who survived two poisoning attempts and was imprisoned in Siberia after criticizing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, delivered an address titled “Free People in an Unfree Country: Standing Up to Kremlin Tyranny, Past and Present.”
Kara-Murza spoke about the impact of individual defiance, linking his message to Raoul Wallenberg, the 1935 U-M graduate who rescued thousands of Jews during World War II.
“The life of Raoul Wallenberg,” Kara-Murza said, “is testimony to how great a difference individuals can make when they choose to do the right thing, regardless of the consequences.”
The Wallenberg Medal and Lecture honor the legacy of Wallenberg. Under the auspices of the Donia Human Rights Center, U-M awards the Wallenberg Medal to those who, through their actions and personal commitment, perpetuate Wallenberg’s extraordinary accomplishments and human values and demonstrate the capacity of the human spirit to stand up for the helpless, to defend the integrity of the powerless, and to speak out on behalf of the voiceless.
Laurie K. McCauley, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, presented the Wallenberg Medal to Kara-Murza. “His life exemplifies moral courage in the face of tyranny,” she said. “A historian, journalist and politician, Vladimir Kara-Murza has dedicated his life to the cause of democracy and human rights in Russia.”
“Like Raoul Wallenberg before him, Vladimir Kara-Murza has risked everything to defend those who cannot defend themselves.”
Behaving like free people in an unfree country
Kara-Murza began his lecture by recalling the example of Soviet dissidents, ordinary citizens who stood up to totalitarian rule.
“My country, Russia, has experienced more than its fair share of injustice and inhumanity,” Kara-Murza said. “But one of the most hopeful and inspiring lessons from our history is that at any period, however dark the times, however strong the oppression, you would always find people in Russia who are prepared to do the right thing regardless of the consequences.”
Among “the most remarkable of these people,” he continued, “were Soviet dissidents. They were not armed with anything except their word and a sense of inner freedom. They stood up to a mighty totalitarian state with a ruthless machine of repression, and in the end, amazingly, they proved stronger.”
It began, Kara-Murza said, on Pushkin Square in Moscow on Dec, 5. 1965, a day that had been designated as Constitution Day.
He described how several dozen people gathered at the foot of the monument to the poet Alexander Pushkin with a slogan, “Respect Your Own Constitution.”
“It was a movement that had no structures, no leaders, no hierarchy,” he said, “a movement where everyone was united by an unspoken but deeply shared bond — a sense of personal responsibility for what was happening around them, and a refusal to become silent accomplices in the crimes committed by the regime.”
Quoting historian Andrei Amalrik, Kara-Murza said, “The dissenters did something brilliantly simple in an unfree country: they began to behave like free people, thereby changing the moral climate and the country’s prevailing tradition.”
Kara-Murza also recalled the August 1968 protest against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. “Seven people, seven brave Russians, went out onto Red Square in Moscow in a silent demonstration of protest. The banner they brought with them read, ‘For your freedom and ours.’ They were not there even five minutes. They were beaten, arrested, and herded away.”
“But after what they did,” he said, “no one could say that there was universal public support in the Soviet Union for the invasion of Czechoslovakia.”
Quoting participant and poet Natalya Gorbanevskaya, he added: “A nation minus me is no longer an entire nation.”
Hope is a courageous choice
From these acts of resistance, Kara-Murza drew what he called the central lesson of his address: “Autocratic regimes may seek to rule by fear, but fear is always a personal choice.”
He recalled being 10 years old during the failed 1991 Soviet coup attempt, when Russian citizens stood unarmed in front of tanks to defend democracy.
“However strong a dictatorship may appear,” he said, “when enough people are willing to stand up, all that strength becomes meaningless.”
Yet he noted how that fragile democracy was dismantled in subsequent years. “Just as in Soviet times, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s regime relies on fear to maintain its power,” Kara-Murza said, describing how independent television has been silenced, opposition parties banned, and peaceful protests criminalized.
Remembering the unafraid
Throughout the lecture, Kara-Murza paid tribute to mentors and friends who embodied courage. He recalled Boris Nemtsov, the former deputy prime minister and a leading opposition figure who was assassinated in 2015 near the Kremlin.
“He could not be bought, he could not be scared, he could not be pushed out of the country,” Kara-Murza said. “Freedom is when you’re not afraid to tell the truth. Boris was free and unafraid to the very end.”
He also remembered Vladimir Bukovsky, the famed dissident who spent 12 years in Soviet prisons and psychiatric hospitals. When asked later in life whether he expected to change anything if he returned to Russia to run for president, Kara-Murza said Bukovsky replied: “No, of course I don’t. But people are starting to be afraid again. And when people are starting to be afraid, you have to come stand next to them and say, here I am. I’m not afraid.”
“I felt goosebumps all over my back as I was listening to his words,” Kara-Murza said. “And I’ve thought of them often since that day.”
Defying fear in a new era
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Kara-Murza refused to be afraid or remain silent. “Even if I was powerless to change anything,” he said, “I knew that I would not allow fear to permeate through me.”
Kara-Murza noted that today in Russia there are more than 4,500 political prisoners — more, he said, than in the entire Soviet Union in the mid-1980s.
Their alleged offenses include observing a minute of silence for Ukrainian children killed during the war and distributing leaflets that criticized the Russian occupation of Ukraine. One of those imprisoned, Kara-Murza said, is 15 years old.
“I accept this medal not only for myself,” Kara-Murza said, “but on behalf of all political prisoners in Russia — my fellow citizens who had the conscience to distinguish right from wrong and the courage to say it out loud.”
He also announced that he would donate the Wallenberg Medal’s $10,000 monetary award to the 30 October Foundation, which he and his wife, Evgenia, founded to assist families of political prisoners.
Hope for the future
“Today’s Russia is a very dark place,” Kara-Murza said. “But out of darkness often comes hope.”
He shared the story of a St. Petersburg band, Stoptime, whose members were recently arrested for performing anti-war songs. On the way to court, the group’s guitarist proposed to the lead singer with a ring fashioned from a paper napkin.
“They were both laughing and smiling,” Kara-Murza said. “Free people in an unfree country. Alexander is 22, Diana is 18. They are the future of Russia, and the septuagenarian dictator in the Kremlin is not.”
“Even in this darkness,” he said, “I am filled with hope and optimism about the future of my country. Because as history has shown us, however strong a dictatorship may appear, all that strength becomes meaningless when enough people are willing to stand up.”
The lecture was followed by a question-and-answer session, moderated by Steven Ratner, director of the Donia Human Rights Center and the Bruno Simma Collegiate Professor of Law.
Questions from audience members addressed topics including youth activism in Russia, the future of global democracy, and the repression of LGBTQ+ Russians.
When a student asked what people in the United States could do to help, Kara-Murza said simply, “Please write to political prisoners.” He explained that authoritarian regimes seek not only to punish the prisoners but to isolate and demoralize them and make them think they’ve been forgotten.
“One of the things that was absolutely lifesaving for me was the letters I was receiving from all over Russia, from all over the world — people that I’d never met, that I’ve never known … who took time to write even a few words, even a few lines to express that solidarity and that support,” he said.
Kara-Murza pointed to the Russian human-rights organization OVD-Info, which facilitates the process of sending letters through its website.
From The University Record
November 5, 2025
